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A Thesis's Tale

Below are the 14 most recent journal entries.

 

 
  2005.12.22  13.55
To be frank.

I suppose one of my biggest questions for you, my committee, is if you ever face a situation where you're so tired of the subject, how do you get motivated again? The revision process is par for a graduate student, but I don't want to look at my thesis anymore in the anticipation that I'm going to do something else wrong. What drives you after working for so long, and realizing that you were on the wrong track for months at a time? Will the revision process ever end? How can I better communicate with all of you to better organize the content of my thesis?

I would greatly appreciate comments from each of you.

Happy holidays.

  
 


 
  2005.10.19  20.07
Revisions

This poor blog is suffering from the maladies I described in my thesis... lack of updates, which leads to a decline viewership. I'm taking a break from revisions... the lifeblood of a professional communicator's work. In the process of writing these revisions, I cannot remember who wrote about the writing and revising process. I want to say it may be Hackos and Redish, but I also want to mention Selzer, but then I have a feeling I could be mixing things up with the standard exponential product life-cycle taught in basic marketing classes.

Babbling aside, I don't think most MAPC students have had the full experience of the writing and revision cycle unless a thesis is being written (my terministic screen does not allow me to have knowledge for the project requirement); with most class papers, many students bid a fair adieu for awhile until it returns with a grade. Final. Fin. End of writing paper. The means to the end for a thesis, though, is not so simple. But when I think about it, I worked hard on this, and I don't want my name, or the name of my committee members, attached to a poorly written thesis. And in my somewhat tired haze, I think it's really not a cycle of writing and revising, but more of a spiral starting at a point, and growing outward with revisions, additional data, more information and more content, which ends somewhere far from the center of the spiral.

As most graduate students trying to finish, I think I'm tired. It's odd to try to see the forest through the trees, which is why I needed to come back to Clemson. It's been good to be back at Clemson to have fresh sets of eyes to read my thesis, and Karl can only read my thesis so many times. I think I stared at the thesis too much, I was having some difficulty seeing even the most minor spelling and grammatical mistakes. It's good to receive the revisions because wow, it made me realize just how much data I had, how interesting it is, and that I should actually talk about it.

I was joking with Dr. Gresham today; my mom and dad's first grandchild was a dissertation, with a thesis soon on the way. I hope my they are proud. :)

  
 


 
  2005.09.21  13.35
This week's thoughts

I've spent the week thinking about what to write for my conclusions for Chapter V. It's a bit odd when all of the reading, research, and writing I've done for what seems to be an eternity can be summed into a paragraph. I've also rewritten parts of Chapter IV, which I will be sending either later today or early tomorrow. Chapter IV really doesn't have any drastic changes, but I added a table and a section which I had handwritten, but forgot to add to the typed version.

I think I'm still kind of stuck on the process of writing... I'll send what little I have of Chapter V since yet again, I think I am stuck on the writing process. I was talking with a MA student, and we were talking about how writing the last chapter is somewhat anti-climactic. All of this work seems to be summed up in a couple of cute pages. It's disconcerting, really, but there's also an attached relief that I can actually do research.

  
 


 
  2005.09.15  18.07
Ideas for Chapter V

Here's a brief outline for Chapter V: Future Work and Conclusions, with an emphasis on future work:

1. Future research on additional blogging platforms, such as Blogger, Movable Type, and the like in an attempt to refine the definition for both a weblog and a community weblog;
--In addition, do other blogging platforms allow for locked entries?

2. Long-term study focusing on evolving data to determine if and when it becomes static;

3. Is there a possibility of a genuinely open space without rules from moderators and administrators--is this 'purity' possible? Probably not, but how close can it get?

4. Focus on an individual blog as opposed to a community weblog, or blogs focusing on topics other than feminism;

5. How is community identity created through posts and subsequent comments;

6. Which posters post more frequently? What do they post and why to they post? (similar questions for comments).

This is what I'm currently working with. I still need to be more coherent with my conclusions through the results, which is tomorrow's task.

  
 


 
  2005.09.15  10.35
Take two of research question...

I tried to revise the bold section of the previous post in an attempt to make it more coherent. Here goes:

Differences in topic, language, and discourse between public and locked entries in the selected feminist weblogs were examined for this study. First, the subject of the posts was analyzed to find patterns in topics. Next, the discourse of the comments resulting from the posts was researched. Here, I was interested in the tone of the discussion and how it fostered or inhibited a safe and equal environment for communication. Also, I looked for language which promoted or hampered equality when communicating in the feminist communities. Chapter IV will further discuss the research phase by analyzing the data set according to the methodology of Chapter III.

I'm still working on Chapter IV... I have a lot written, but I'm trying to organize it to follow the order of topics discussed in the above paragraph.

  
 


 
  2005.09.11  09.53


Wow, it's been nearly a month since I've updated the thesis blog (but not nearly a month since I've worked on my thesis). To answer Dr. Taylor's question from her previous comment, I've directly pulled a paragraph from Chapter III, concerning the research question:

What language is used in feminist community weblogs to propagate challenging and reforming women's issues and the [many] definition[s] of feminism? The perspectives offered in the feminist community weblogs were analyzed according to the language used to challenge a patriarchal oppression in a male-dominated electronic environment. How did the oppressed group (women and feminists) communicate their issues to a greater public? In addition, what did feminists talk about in locked entries not available to the greater public? How does the discourse differ between open and locked entries? In an attempt to answer these questions, both locked and unlocked entries were analyzed for topic and, if applicable, subsequent discussions. The topic and language was analyzed to determine if any hostile language was present in the post or following comments. The largest question to be explored is if and how the tone and information in locked posts differs from public posts?


I've started writing Chapter Four, and determined that I am either a slow writer or so engrossed with getting done right the first time, that I'm trying (perhaps too hard?) to properly organize the chapter. My other problem, which is somewhat contradictory to the above statement, is that I am not a linear writer. I can't start writing at the beginning and finish at the end. I've found myself writing sections at a time, but in no particular order. I'm hoping to have a draft of the results out by the end of this week. I also have a working outline for Conclusions and Future Work, but I don't think I'll feel entirely comfortable with it until I finish the results and receive feedback. But I am still writing, albeit rather slowly...

  
 


 
  2005.08.17  21.43
Thoughts on Chapter 4/ Results

Now to write chapters 4 and 5... at least coding is complete, which I thought would never happen. I also completed most of the revisions for chapter 3, although I do need to add some additional information.

I have a brief outline for what to look for in chapter 4; today will involve number crunching, while the rest of the week will be sorting through qualitative data, which Excel can at least sort for me, but won't really tell me what is going on.

Here's today's goal of information phishing (oh, crazy Internet terminology):

A. Find the number and percentage of the following (made much easier by Excel):

    1. posts with hostile language
    2. locked posts
    3. categorized by posting topic
    4. suspended user comments
    5. deleted comments.




B. Describe any existing differences between locked and unlocked entries involving:

    1. topic
    2. number of comments
    3. type of discussion (responses to comments; links to websites; hostile language)




C. Describe the impact of community rules on the feminist weblogs:

    1. how have the rules (if applicable) altered discussion?
    2. do members follow the rules?




D. Describe the limitations placed on comments since some are voluntarily deleted by a member, or deleted by LiveJournal since the member was suspended

Looking through this week's goals, I was talking to Karl about the data set evolving. Has anyone had to deal with such a thing? I found it interesting that the data is not static; it changes with additional comments, members editing comments or deleting them entirely, LiveJournal administrators deleting comments from suspended members, new community members and departed community members. It's hard to collect the data the day of the posting, since it seems many members have something to say... Perhaps this can be food for thought for future work?

  
 


 
  2005.08.06  06.25
Slash and burn tactics.

I'm completed with coding data. Funny enough, I thought this day would never come! One question from Dr. Taylor concerned whittling down my data. I'll try to explain to the best of my ability.

1. The most obvious reason to cut down on data was the sheer amount. I could be coding forever, which didn't seem feasible for a December graduation (more like December of 2017...). I was completely wrong in predicting just how long it would take to code (since I was aiming to graduate with Karl this Saturday, but to no avail).

2. So this data hacking process... I've been keeping track of posts, number of comments, topic, and response types in an Excel spreadsheet. Since Excel is great with numerical data, I created a new spreadsheet and only put in the number of comments per post. I added the total comments from 734 posts, which came to 19,728 comments, which I then took the average of (19,728/734) which was 26.7, rounded up to 27. The mean number of comments per post was 27, which was much more manageable to handle with coding. Out of curiosity, I also wanted to determine what the median was. I sorted the number of comments per post in ascending (0) to descending (782) order, and divided 734 in half to determine the midpoint, which was 367. The median was a mere 13 comments. I was more satisfied with the mean as opposed to the median, because conversations with additional comments were more data-rich and more representative of the number and type of posts made in feminist. I completed coding for feminist_fatale and feminist_fury months ago.

Determining the mean was my cutting off point for accepting posts. 528 posts (I'm pretty sure, I need to check the spreadsheet) met the qualification of having 27 comments in response to the post. The total number of comments is drastically reduced to 5,345.

Please feel free to leave any comments and/or recommendations...

  
 


 
  2005.08.03  22.14
Data overload.

Since arriving in Redwood Shores, I have learned a very important lesson. One that I wish I learned when I first started this thesis:

All data is not necessarily good data.

I've been suffering from data overload when I started analyzing the posts, and I got to thinking, what Master's student has four boxes of data for their thesis? And not small boxes either? The file boxes are bursting at the seams with print outs of posts and comments. There's just so much data, that many forms of research would be possible with the original data set, such as the rhetoric of links used in posts (Burbles) and how posters use these links to attempt to persuade community members. There's also the visual aspect, of how community members do or do not identify with their user pictures (many comments were related to user pictures instead of the original topic of the post).

While looking at the posts with many, many, many comments, it was interesting to note that any form of organized conversation within the designated threads was thrown out the window. There are 735 posts in one single blog; those 735 posts accumulated a total of 19,728 comments. In an effort to save my sanity, I had to realize the lesson mentioned above: all data is not necessarily good data.

I've divided the data into sections, and averaged out the number of comments per post. I believe this will be a suitable representation of posts within this blog, since it will still encompass 541 individual posts (including three locked posts which exceed the comment requirement). I'm still playing with some math, but overall, it's fairly safe to state that I'm complete with sorting the data. It helped to use Excel to keep track of posts and comments; I could color code locked posts and any post that included 'hostile' comments. Excel will also let me sort the data according to topic, making statistical analysis at least a little better. If anyone is interested to look at the data, please let me know and I can either post it online on my U drive or send it via email. One spreadsheet (not surprisingly, for the big blog) is a rather large file. The other two spreadsheets are manageable files.

Now off to analysis. At least Stanford and their library are down the road, and they have agreements with out of state graduate students...

  
 


 
  2005.07.28  20.01


Wow, this space has been abandoned and become a part of the Internet graveyard. I guess moving contributes to lack of thesis work, actually any work for that matter. I was told that many that leave the physical campus of their studies stray from their thesis work. I've kept this in mind during the cross country drive. The day Karl started work, I worked too. I've felt accomplished over the past few days, and have been hacking away at the data. There's still a lot of it to work through, but it's being whittled down. It helps to be in a new environment; it's not only a physical fresh start, but also a psychological one as well. Since I don't know anyone or the area, I've been working away (not to say I've been a complete slave to my thesis. I went on my first solo drive on the dreaded freeway yesterday in search for a book store).

Still working on data though. Hopefully, I can change the tone of my entries soon...

  
 


 
  2005.07.01  11.08


Through this arduous process of coding, it's really interesting to see what patterns are forming. I talked to Dr. Morton earlier this week concerning the coding. I told her it is coming along slowly but surely. I explained my process to her, which is:

1. I categorize the post topic according to content (many are links to outside websites, links to outside news articles, personal introductions, or assistance with feminist topics whether it concern classwork or general inquiries);

2. Categorize each comment associated with its designated post; many of the comments are simply responses (i.e. thanks, wow, posts without much opinion or substance). Many have an opinion to express, which places it under what I've called 'personal commentary'. I've also categorized if the comments are combative/offensive/defensive;

3. Once sifting through the data is done, count up the categorizations. Find common threads with posts and comments.

In today's coding, I was thinking that many of the posts have links to outside websites. This led me to think of Burbles and the rhetoric of hyperlinks. Do the links really work to persuade an audience? I found that in one post, the use of a hyperlink actually upset some commentors; the nice thing about LiveJournal is that many commentors/posters are certainly not shy in expressing their opinions.

I'm going to need to define terminology. Today's list concerns:
trolls
crosspost
personal commentary as how it relates to the data
user pictures (userpic)

The Burbles link (haha, get it?) is still getting to me though. This would work to mention this question/idea for future research in my conclusion; how well does a poster's personal selection of websites external from the community affect commenting and community opinion...

  
 


 
  2005.06.23  13.06
Soylent Green is people?

Welcome to yet another day of coding. Today's game plan (and the game plan for the next few days, I suppose) is to knock the smaller entries with a limited number of posts out of the way. I can then concentrate on the large posts with numerous comments, and I won't have to do it by myself. Since Karl's completed his dissertation (I would call him lucky, but he worked long and hard to have it completed at the end of the month), he offered to help me code the larger posts, which will help immensely. I sometimes want to kick myself, because what master's student would collect four boxes worth of data for a thesis? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Today's post is pretty much a repeat of yesterday's events. I thought I would take a break to update since I've been coding for the past couple of hours. I'm still coding much of January for 'feminist.' I'm just happy to be completed with 'feminist_fury' and 'feminist_fatale,' although I have to enter my handwritten notes into my pretty spreadsheet. It seems with the spreadsheets of data, my appendix will be long and messy.

Also, I watched Soylent Green last night since I spent much of yesterday coding. It brought up an interesting question of ethics, which made me think of Katz. (Note: expediency as a term was also used in the film). Is it right to do the wrong thing to assist the greater good? Food for thought as I'm going to eat a cracker or two...

  
 


 
  2005.06.22  13.40


I wish that I could write that I did something astounding for my thesis. I wouldn't be honest if I said I love coding and it is my favorite thing to do. Alas, it's difficult working through four boxes of data. The big news is that I do have two out of three of the blogs coded. Alas, the last one is the largest with near 720 posts. That's not even mentioning the additional comments which accompany the post. I am working on it though, but through coding, I find that I am constantly second-guessing myself. There's so much data and so many things that are possible to research with it. But I need to make sure that I follow what I outlined in my proposal, or I could find myself in graduate school for a very long time. But since I'm not very experienced with this coding business (violent versus nonviolent; are people respecting one another through posts and comments; aggressive nature in posters because it's not face-to-face) lead me with so many questions to ask. But with all of these questions bouncing around in my head, I need to keep track of them and write them down somewhere (here, perhaps?)

I thought if MAPC students working on a project keep journals (of course, more related to the orals list and academia) why can't I keep a personal journal concerning the progress of my thesis (although I am *very* late in the game). And with the eminent move out west on my mind, I will need to keep the academic journal separate from the personal journal. Of course, there is going to be some crossover, but I'd like to keep my personal thoughts aside from here.

Off to code again. I think if I get the smaller posts with a small number of comments coded, I can then concentrate on the larger posts with numerous comments. I think the largest number of comments stemming from a single post is 728. The topic of discussion? Abortion. Go figure. That one may take me a few days to work through.

  
 


 
  2005.06.18  18.49


Well, first entry for a new locale. At least I'll be able to use this space for documenting work on my thesis, which I really cannot do on my personal account elsewhere. Hopefully this will serve useful not only for myself, but also for my committee members in tracking the progress of coding/collecting data for the thesis.

Just two more chapters to go. And a whole heck of a lot of data. Let's see what happens.